“I didn’t volunteer to have my portrait done; certainly not. Andy Warhol had asked me. And I accepted, since his gallery, Ace, had donated $5,000 to the American Indian Movement—and that was it. When the money went to the cause, I gave my consent.”— Russell Means

Unlike most of the portraits that Andy Warhol made after 1970, The American Indian (Russell Means) is less about immortalizing a celebrity or endowing a well-paying client; the painting belongs to Warhol’s theme of “big American topics.” In fact, it’s quite unlikely that Warhol himself chose Means as a portrait subject. Given his famous question to friends and dealers—“Gee, what should I paint?”—and his tendency to readily follow their suggestions, it’s more probable that someone at Ace Gallery, Warhol’s West Coast representation in Venice, California, conceived the idea. Means theorized that someone at Ace conducted a brief survey among American Indians in California and Canada asking who they thought should represent their culture today, and Means was their choice. Means was a logical selection, as he was the most prominent member of the American Indian Movement (AIM), which was formed to promote the freedom of Native Americans to follow their traditional ways and to call national attention to their oppressed state.

Matthew Brannon

American, born 1971 in St. Maries, Idaho; lives and works in New York City

Film advertising and popular culture were early formative influences for Matthew Brannon, who was born in Saint Maries, Idaho, and raised in the Northwest away from the cultural offerings of a large metropolitan center. His undergraduate years at UCLA and then at Columbia University, where he received an MFA, broadened his personal philosophy of art. Brannon’s acknowledgement of the artistic influences of Marcel Duchamp, Andy Warhol, and Woody Allen underscores his expansive approach to art-making.

Brannon’s large-scale works include a number of vinyl wall murals. Last to Know, from the Denver Art Museum's exhibition Embrace! features the seemingly straightforward, yet disconcerting, motif of plunging kitchen knives, cleavers and a single pair of tweezers on the sloping wall of the Newman Overlook in the Frederic C. Hamilton Building. An undercurrent of vulnerability and violence belies the decorative appeal and seeming simplicity of the arrangement. Brannon describes himself as “a fully committed believer in Freud,” and his themes spotlight the insecurities and misplaced desires that thwart us all. His blatant imitation of advertising models also playfully blurs the lines between art, graphic design, and promotional advertising.

Bruce Nauman

American, born 1941 in Fort Wayne, Indiana; lives and works near Galisteo, New Mexico

Reproduction, including downloading, of Nauman work is prohibited by copyright laws and international conventions without the express written permission of Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York.

Like much of Bruce Nauman’s work, Double Poke in the Eye II may be thought of as a kind of performance piece, without a beginning or an end. Both humorous and savage, its eye-catching play of light compels you to witness an unstoppable fight. Nauman is often compared to Samuel Beckett for evoking the painful drama of existence.

Edward Ruscha

American, born 1937 in Omaha, Nebraska; lives and works in Los Angeles

Edward Ruscha has always been fascinated with words, those paradoxical combinations of abstract symbols and definite meanings which we use to describe the world around and within us. The painting It is Said has these words emblazoned against a mountainous landscape, but it leaves no clues as to what is said, by whom and why? Ruscha does not expect the viewer to interpret his work in any particular way: “I know that viewers of my work looking at an English word are going to try to translate it into a meaning. But often I’d like them to lose the meaning and just look at the word as an abstract jumble. Yet I’m not giving the viewer any guidance as to how to respond. I think the artist should stand by in silence.”

Eric Fischl

American, born 1948 in New York City; lives and works in New York City

Composed of three canvases that are slightly off kilter from one another, Pretty Ladies suggests a cinematic scene, but one that gives the audience a snippet of a narrative. Fischl’s layered brushstrokes create an open-ended scene made up of a nude black woman watching TV on a portable TV/radio. She lies in repose as bright, mid-day light streams in from the window. A figurine sits on the mantle of an unused fireplace. The object most likely represents a pre-Columbian figurine from central Mexico. These figurines are commonly referred to as “pretty ladies” and were probably fertility symbols. While Fischl gives viewers glimpses of a possible narrative and mood, the scene remains incomplete. This ambiguity may be what makes Fischl’s work so powerful, eliciting investigation, but often leaving questions unanswered.

Georges Braque

French, 1881-1963, born in Paris, France

Still Life with Grapes

1918

Oil paint on canvas

Charles Francis Hendrie Memorial Collection, 1966.181

Cubism, a technique that outraged art connoisseurs in the early twentieth century, is a way to portray three-dimensional objects on a two-dimensional surface. By deconstructing them into an arrangement of overlapping planes that represent multiple points of view, Georges Braque and Pablo Picasso upset the illusionist conventions of earlier art. In this still life, Braque created a composition of overlapping planes to create a symphony of color and texture, while leaving clues to the original subject; grapes and a partial newspaper heading Le Journal are clearly visible. Thanks to his early training as a painter-decorator, Braque was a master of textures. The grain of the brownish wood-like panel at the right is simulated by a comb he ran over the surface of the wet paint.

Juan Gris

Spanish, 1887-1927, born in Madrid, Spain

Nature morte á la bouteille de Bordeaux (Still life with a bottle of Bordeaux)

1919

Oil paint on canvas

Gift of Marion G. Hendrie, 1966.176

Juan Gris was an early convert to Cubism, and often went to the studio Pablo Picasso and Georges Braque shared from 1908 until 1912. From 1916-1919, after extensive work in papiers collés (cut paper collage), Gris undertook a systematic analysis of the Cubist style. He reduced the number of objects represented and used fewer simultaneous views, resulting in flat but legible forms. Gris described the works from this period as “flat colored architecture.”

Herbert Bayer

American, 1900-1985, born in Haag, Austria

colorado mural

1948

Oil paint on unstretched canvas

Gift of Joella Bayer, 1986.1917

Bauhaus master Herbert Bayer championed a new direction in modern American art and design. He lived in Colorado for 28 years—some of the most productive and influential years of his career. When he left Colorado for California, he gave the Denver Art Museum the beginning of what would become the largest public collection of his work anywhere. The collection demonstrates the breadth of his work in all media and his lifetime commitment to the Bauhaus ideal of total design. In the 1940s, Bayer became fascinated by the inner structure of mountains, particularly the movements within the earth’s crust. This painting depicts an abstract vision of both the inside and outside of a mountain, including its snow-covered peak.

Joan Mitchell

American, 1925-1992, born in Chicago, Illinois

Dune

1970

Oil paint on canvas

Gift of Dr. Charles and Linda Hamlin on the occasion of Dianne Vanderlip's 25th year with the Contemporary Collection, 2001.653

Joan Mitchell is generally described as a second generation abstract expressionist, although her work has the powerful energy of many of the first generation, such as Jackson Pollock, Willem de Kooning, and Franz Kline. But unlike the abstract expressionists, Mitchell drew inspiration from landscapes and nature. As a result, her paintings, though very abstract, sometimes take on the expansiveness of a landscape. However, her intent was not to create recognizable scenes but to convey the emotion of place. Dune, painted at Mitchell’s home outside of Paris, is exemplary of her intense brushwork of thick, textured patches of color, and subdued fields of white that, together, suggests a fall or winter landscape.

True to his Italian heritage, John DeAndrea believes that the ideal of human beauty is represented by Greek and Roman sculptures. Unlike his ancestors, however, DeAndrea chooses his models from life, then in an elaborate casting procedure makes his sculptures directly from their bodies, paints them in flesh tones, and adds details including human hair, eyelashes, and glass eyes, as paragons of contemporary beauty. Linda, one of our most popular works, is only on view for a short time each year because she is made of polyvinyl, a kind of plastic that breaks down chemically over time when subjected to light. Recently, DeAndrea started casting his figures in bronze before he paints them, so that they can be exhibited year-round. Happily, he has re-cast in bronze and then painted a very early piece, Artist and Model, which is expected to be on view in the future.

Jonas Burgert's spaces are theatre stages. He is not looking through a window onto the real world; instead he creates a world of his own into which he stages figures. These figures are never meant to suggest individual human beings, but allegories for the human existence. In paintings like Temple, Burgert creates a conundrum that deals with human characteristics and qualities. The attitude of single-heartedness and the virtue of "standing tall" might remain with the main figure that, untouched by the apocalyptic surroundings, stands up for its dignity and invulnerability. Another figure, crowned with an unfamiliar headdress, is searching the ground, unaware of its environment. The atmosphere in Burgert’s paintings is often taken from a world of destruction and decay. Herein lies a visual equivalent to the many visions of the end of the world that are popular today in music, film, and literature. The leading character in Burgert’s Temple might carry the fire as does Cormac McCarthy’s boy in his 2006 novel, The Road.

Lawrence Weiner

American, born 1942 in Bronx, New York; lives and works in Amsterdam and New York

As a celebrated founding member of the conceptual art movement of the 1970s, Lawrence Weiner has inspired several generations of artists to explore the parameters of the traditional art object. Weiner employs the immediacy and universality of language to break down the barriers of art-historical precedents by inviting the viewer to interpret the work from his or her own personally relevant contemporary reality – without the influences of historical reference. First seen in the exhibition Embrace!, AS TO BE IN PLAIN SIGHT was installed on a dizzying wall on level four of the Hamilton Building. Today, it can be viewed as an outdoor work on the south wall of the North Building.

Bôite, Series D (green version) displays 68 miniatures of the artist’s work. This single work is an index of Duchamp’s entire career, containing reproductions of his pieces from his earliest paintings through the revolutionary Ready-mades. Between 1936 and 1941, Duchamp prepared 324 miniature copies of each of his works to be included in the Boîte-en-valise series, smuggling the material through Nazi-occupied France using a pass that identified him as a cheese merchant. He brought the contents of his mini museum to the United States and the boxes were gradually assembled over the years with the assistance of friends and his wife, Teeny.

These modest objects belie the revolutionary nature of the artist himself, who dared to answer his own question of “what is art?” with “Art is what I say it is.” Duchamp believed it was the idea behind the final object that represented the art, not simply the objects themselves. This concept has influenced artists and art-making ever since.

The television screen is often a component of Nam June Paik’s work, as is his wry sense of humor. Both are present in Lady Secretary, Bilingual, Will Travel..., which depicts a futuristic humanoid composed of nine television screens and a pay phone. Paik was a pioneer in establishing video as a form of art. Since the early 1960s, his revolutionary work paved the way for several generations of artists to further explore the medium.

In 1968, Guston drastically changed his artistic style from a lyrical form of abstract expressionism to a kind of cartoony figuration. After the upheavals of the 1960s, Guston renounced what he felt to be the limitations of total abstraction, abandoning “purity” for “narrative.” While many at first ridiculed him, it did not take long for the art world to come around to his profound—and autobiographical—late work.

Pablo Picasso

Spanish, 1881-1973, born in Málaga, Spain

Paysage, Horta de Ebro

1909

Oil paint on canvas

Gift of Charles Francis Hendrie Memorial, 1966.175

Pablo Picasso, one of the most famous artists of the 1900s, is best-known for co-founding cubism with Georges Braque. This still life incorporates the cubist aim of representing the world from multiple viewpoints. While the image initially appears to be an abstract mixture of colors and shapes, one can come to understand the image—and other Cubist works—by breaking it down and analyzing its parts.

Richard Phillips draws inspiration for his large photo-realist paintings from photographs of celebrities, which he “humanizes” by recreating the glossy shots in paint on canvas, albeit in hyper-realist, supersized images. Here, he chooses a lascivious gesture photographed from below the model’s face to focus our attention on the difference a change of angle can make to an otherwise polished, glamorized face-shot.

Robert Motherwell

American, 1915-91, born in Aberdeen, Washington

Elegy to the Spanish Republic No. 172 (With Blood)

1989-90

Acrylic paint on canvas

Acquired in memory of Lewis W. Story through the generosity of the Dedalus Foundation and the following donors: Florence R. & Ralph L. Burgess Trust, Laurencin Deaccessions Fund, Vance Kirkland Acquisitions Fund, and the Marion G. Hendrie Fund.

Over Robert Motherwell’s forty-year career as an artist, he produced hundreds of works. The year before he died, Motherwell completed this last monumental Elegy. Motherwell believed: “Making an Elegy is like building a temple, an altar, a ritual place. Unlike the rest of my work, the Elegies are, for the most part, public statements. They reflect the internationalist in me, interested in the historical forces of the 20th century, with strong feelings about the conflicting forces in it.” Despite this statement, Motherwell insisted that the Elegy was not about the Spanish Civil War, but rather a universal lament on people struggling everywhere to gain freedom and independence.

Piet Mondrian’s goal was to create visual harmonies by stripping painting down to its essentials: black lines surrounding rectangles of primary colors on a white ground. The series of paintings produced in Paris between 1929 and 1932, including this one, best expresses this goal. Mondrian believed that the opposition of vertical and horizontal lines creates a purified symbol of nature; where verticals signify masculinity and activity and horizontals signify femininity and serenity.

Overview

Renowned for its impressive collection of modern masterworks and outstanding contemporary objects, the modern and contemporary collection represents more than a century of artistic innovation. Encompassing over 12,500 works made since 1900, the museum’s collection includes works by such artistic luminaries as Pablo Picasso, Marcel Duchamp, Henri Matisse, and Georgia O’Keeffe, as well as 33 paintings, drawings, and collages by the acclaimed abstract-expressionist Robert Motherwell. The collection also holds representative works from the major post-war art movements, including abstract expressionism, minimalism, pop art, conceptual art, and contemporary realism.

It is also home to the Herbert Bayer Collection and Archive, a repository that counts over 8,000 objects in its collection.

The Bayer Collection and Archive is closed because of the museum’s North Building renovation project. We regret that we are unable to access this collection at this time.

During the North Building renovation project the Modern & Contemporary Art galleries are closed. Please view select pieces from the Denver Art Museum’s modern and contemporary art collection in these exhibitions currently on view:

See the Eyes On Exhibition overview page for the latest information on the multi-year contemporary art series.

EXPLORE THE COLLECTION ONLINE: Browse artworks from the modern and contemporary art collection anytime. Check back often for additions and updates.

Highlights

Related Collections

Collection of Polly and Mark Addison

Among the early supporters of the newly formed department were Polly and Mark Addison, who joined other enthusiasts to found the Alliance for Contemporary Art (now named DAM Contemporaries) in 1978, a group whose fundraising activities have helped the department underwrite many important purchases and programs. In the early 2000s, the Denver Art Museum’s acquisition efforts were enhanced when the Addisons initiated an active gift-giving program. Colorado residents and long-time museum supporters, the Addisons are passionate, intelligent collectors of contemporary art in all media who generously share their finds—from time-based work and sculpture to installation art and photography—with the museum. Audience favorites such as Jim Green’s Singing Sinks (located on level one of the North Building) and Charles Sandison’s Chamber (conceived of and installed for the exhibitions Embrace! and Blink! Light, Sound and the Moving Image) are among the many important works the Addisons’ support has brought to the museum.

Collection of Vicki and Kent Logan

Herbert Bayer Collection and Archive

The Herbert Bayer Collection and Archive contains over 8,000 works of art and design, along with extensive documentary material. This internationally important repository is dedicated to the legacy of the Austrian-born Bauhaus master who lived in Colorado for 28 years. The core of this collection and archive came through the artist’s bequest, and scholars visit from around the world to engage in research here.

The Bayer Collection and Archive is closed because of the museum’s North Building renovation project. We regret that we are unable to access this collection at this time.

Born in 1900 in Austria, Herbert Bayer immigrated to the United States in 1938. He moved from New York to Aspen in 1946 at the behest of Walter Paepcke, chairman of the Container Corporation of America. Bayer’s influence is still evident today, especially at the Aspen Institute for Humanistic Studies.

Exhibitions at the DAM

Exhibition

Eyes On

Julie Buffalohead

On View through February 3, 2019

Eyes on: Julie Buffalohead uses metaphors, iconography, and storytelling narratives in her artwork to describe emotional and subversive American Indian cultural experiences, and often analyzes the commercialization of American Indian cultures. More

Exhibition

Eyes On

Shimabuku

On View through February 3, 2019

Three years in the making, this video illustrates the adaptation of a group of Japanese snow monkeys living in a Texas desert sanctuary since they were brought to the U.S. in 1972. More

(This lecture is sold out; to be added to the waiting list, please call 720-913-0130.)
Jordan Casteel will be talking about her upcoming exhibition, Jordan Casteel: Returning the Gaze, which opens February 2, 2019. More

Exhibition

Eyes On

Julie Buffalohead

On View through February 3, 2019

Eyes on: Julie Buffalohead uses metaphors, iconography, and storytelling narratives in her artwork to describe emotional and subversive American Indian cultural experiences, and often analyzes the commercialization of American Indian cultures. More

Exhibition

Eyes On

Shimabuku

On View through February 3, 2019

Three years in the making, this video illustrates the adaptation of a group of Japanese snow monkeys living in a Texas desert sanctuary since they were brought to the U.S. in 1972. More

Artist, activist, and poet Tenzing Rigdol will discuss his upcoming exhibition at the Emmanuel Gallery with curator Sarah Magnatta.

Rigdol was trained in several traditional Tibetan arts, including thangka painting, in India and Nepal.

He moved to the United States and graduated from the College of Arts and Media at the University of Colorado, Denver, in 2005. More

Exhibition

Jordan Casteel

Returning the Gaze

Opens February 2, 2019

Jordan Casteel: Returning the Gaze will feature nearly 30 paintings by Denver-born artist Jordan Casteel, who is now based in Harlem, New York. This presentation represents Casteel’s first major museum exhibition, and provides audiences with a first look at new work by one of the most acclaimed emerging artists working today. More

The Denver Art Museum recently announced that three curators joined the museum. Below is a brief introduction. Stay tuned for more information and opportunities to get to know them and their growing art collections.